1959

I'm a Michigan student interning for the summer at a steel mill in Chicago.  I found out the other day that the HR Manager for the plant had an offer to play for Michigan in Bo's first recruiting class, but declined it because the scholarship did not mean that much - a full ride then was nothing compared to today.  Learning this got me interested in historical recruiting, and how classes used to pan out, since we know how they tend to work now.  I decided to take a look at this out of sheer boredom earlier today, and found it to be an interesting topic - one which I will look deeper into.

Here's a preliminary analysis, using a fitting class to start with - Oosterbaan's last, which was in a situation comparable to Lloyd's last class.  In similar fashion to Lloyd Carr, Oosterbaan won a National Championship (1948) and a Rose Bowl (1950) early in his coaching career, and his success dwindled slowly until he resigned in 1958.  It's obvious that Oosterbaan was working off of the recruits from Crisler's last classes when he won both his Championship and his Rose Bowl, which happened in his first 3 seasons as head coach.  After 1950, he did not win even a conference title.

Here's a breakdown of Oosterbaan's last class: (Taken from Bentley Historical Library)

1959: 55 Freshmen, 0 with numbers assigned.  4-5 Record

1960: 32 Sophomores, 20 with numbers assigned.  5-4 Record2 Starters: Glinka (QB, 3); Raimey (RHB, 3) - 6 Man-Games Started of 99 Man-Games - 6.09%


1961: 20 Juniors, 18 with numbers assigned.  6-3 Record
5 Starters: Houtman (LT, 6); Minko (LG, 6); O'Donnel (RG, 1); Glinka (QB, 2); Raimey (RHB, 9) - 24 Man-Games Started of 99 Man-Games - 24.24%

1962: 10 Graduating Seniors, 7 Juniors.  2-7 Record
10 Starters: Houtman (LT, 1); Minko (LG, 9); Szymanski (C, 1); O'Donnell (RT, 9); Kocan (RE, 3);  Ward (RE, 1); Chandler (QB, 2); Glinka (QB, 1); Strobel (LHB, 3); Raimey (RHB, 4) - 34 Man-Games Started of 99 Man-Games - 34.34%

1963: 4 Graduating Seniors.  3-4-2 Record
2 Starters: Houtman (RT, 1); O'Donnell (LG, 9) - 10 Man-Games Started of 99 Man-Games - 10.10%

Out of 11 Positions, 9 Games, 3 Years (297 Man-Games Played), The Class of 1959 started 74 Man-Games, or 24.9% of the possible Man-Games.  This is low, if you take it that there were only 3 classes that could possibly play in those 3 years (Each class should play 33% of the Man-Games).  If you consider the last year as an additional class, 24.9% is spot-on.  

This implies that only 4 players out of a class of 55 completed 4 years of playing time, using the entirety of their eligibility, since it appears no freshmen played in 1959 (no numbers assigned). Also, this implies that Bump started off as a terrible recruiter, as shown by the absolute collapse when the last class he did not have anything to do with graduated.  None of these guys were All-American Caliber.

For posterity's sake, here are the numbers from Lloyd's last class (Freshmen in 08) so far: (Taken from MGoBlue.com)

2008: 25 Freshmen, 10 of which saw playing time.  3-9 Record
2009: Lost 3 to Transfer, 9 Sophomores, 17 Redshirt Freshmen

RichRod must have had 4 kids come out of the woodwork somewhere.

This isn't as far as I intend to go with this.  I would like to see just how much information I can pull out to show attrition relative to how good a season is, and how well each of our past coaches recruited, beginning with Bump and ending with Carr.  As I go on, I will have clumped diary entries for each coach, showing the progress of each of their classes.  I chose to begin with Oosterbaan's last because this is the 50th anniversary of that class, and prior to Bo's era, football did not mean as much to your average kid planning on heading to college, as there was no real big money career at the end of the line.